Imagine a charity walked into your office and offered you a free continuous internship programme for your PhDs, post-docs and other life science students, that would support you and help you generate revenue for your institute. What would you say?

Many Tech Transfer Offices (TTOs) face challenges in carrying out their day-to-day roles. These include successfully attracting and recruiting people into a TTO career, identifying which piece of research is of commercial interest and creating strategies to successfully commercialise this research - all whilst managing the institute’s expectations. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that many students and academics are unaware of what a TTO does, or why it’s important. This leads to a greater administrative burden for TTOs, as they have to ensure researchers and students are aware of the importance of IP rights and patents and the consequences that occur when these haven’t been taken into account.

Many TTOs therefore decide to de-prioritise reagent commercialisation, as reagents have a low commercial value and the process of finding existing reagents on campus and identifying which are of commercial or scientific value is extremely resource intensive. However, reagents can provide an additional, valuable, long-term revenue stream for you and your institutes. This is because the lifecycle of reagent licensing lasts for decades, providing you with a regular licensing income that remains constant across the years.

Ximbassadors can help you unlock and access revenue from your reagents

The Ximbassador program is an internship run in conjunction with you, targeting PhDs, post-docs and other life science students. The aim of the Ximbassador program is to engage with laboratories on campus to investigate the tools and reagents that exist within your labs. Ximbassadors also contribute to the identification and description of novel research reagents, before working with us on the reagent commercialization process.

You gain multiple benefits from having a Ximbassador at your institute:

• Increase your efficiency – A Ximbassador is responsible for finding reagents on campus and then commercialising them with our support. As there is limited Tech Transfer involvement needed during this process, you can save time and focus on commercialising your more valuable assets such as new therapeutics, or a new device.
• Generate more revenue – A Ximbassador is a dedicated resource aimed exclusively at sourcing, finding and commercialising reagents on campus, ensuring new commercialisation and revenue opportunities are identified for your institute.
• Increase awareness of the importance of commercialisation on campus – A Ximbassador needs to work closely with researchers to find reagents. This means they are in the perfect position to increase awareness of the benefits of commercialisation, what TTOs do and are able to highlight the importance of IP rights and patents to the researchers.
• Increase understanding and awareness of TTO careers – The Ximbassador program provides research students with a chance to experience a career path outside of academia and raises their awareness of what a role within a tech transfer office involves.
• Provide a comprehensive list of reagents commercialised from your campus – Every reagent a Ximbassador finds and commercialises is added to Ximbio’s reagent portfolio. This is supported by online tools that allow you to view and monitor the progress of reagents that commercialised from your institute.

Discover how else Ximbio could help you in facing your TTO challenges